Broadcast

America by the Numbers with Maria Hinojosa puts a human face on the demographic changes in the U.S. and looks at how the rising multicultural population is influencing our culture, our conversation and our politics. Using state of the art info-graphic animations, each single subject episode opens with a “By the Numbers” segment that sets up the story with the latest data on a particular issue. What follows tells the human stories behind the numbers, challenging stereotypes, defying expectations and speaking frankly about controversial and critical issues like race, politics and immigration.

Children of Giant exposes the events and emotions that transformed the small town of Marfa, Texas (the film site of George Steven’s epic Giant) during and beyond Anglo/Latino segregation, through the voices of the individuals who experienced it firsthand.

For 75 years, Blackwell School in Marfa, Texas exclusively served Latino students. The deteriorating building and stringent learning conditions for the students typified the disparity and racism between whites and Mexican Americans. The school itself both resulted from and perpetuated de facto segregation in terms of class and race. This film will look at the years leading up to and following its disbanding in 1965 when the Latino students were told to pick up their desks and carry them across tracks to the Anglo school. Using clips from the locally filmed Hollywood feature film Giant (George Stevens, 1956), Children of Giant will explore whether Marfa, like so many towns throughout the Southwest, has truly achieved success in integration.

La Batalla is a documentary about the Latino experience at home and in combat. Framing La Batalla are memoirs of two siblings, Everett and Delia Alvarez, who stood on opposite sides of the Vietnam War, one as a POW and the other protesting at home. Their stories and a few others are told through interview, footage of then and now, and an array of documentary evidence, to illustrate the sacrifices Latinos made while staking their claims to citizenship. Some did so by fighting in Vietnam, others by fighting against the war and still others were forced to choose sides, for this was a war that disproportionately called Latino youths to serve. For the first time, many said no.

A documentary that chronicles the ups and downs of being a Latina actress in Hollywood, Now En Español addresses issues of Latino identity and representation through the lives of the 5 dynamic women who dub Desperate Housewives into Spanish for American audiences.

Ruben Salazar, one of the 20th century’s most prominent Mexican-American journalists, was killed in 1970 by an L.A. County Sheriff. At the heart of the film is Salazar’s transformation from a mainstream, middle-of-the-road reporter to a supporter and primary chronicler of the radical Chicano movement. The film will also embark on an in-depth investigation of his mysterious death at the hands of law enforcement – still a painful and unresolved chapter in American history.

Siqueiros: Walls of Passion is a one-hour documentary film biography on Mexican visual artist David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974). One of Mexico’s three great muralists (along with Rivera and Orozco), Siqueiros was a controversy-stirring revolutionary and lifetime activist who loved everyday people, lived with theatrical flair and painted on an epic scale. Fearlessly adventurous in his combat of discrimination, Fascism, and oppression, he painted murals throughout the Americas, shot down rivals in the Mexican Revolution, commanded battalions in the Spanish Civil War, and challenged fellow artists the world over to paint for the Common Good. Siqueros: Walls of Passion aims to both celebrate a history and offer a vision of an artist ahead of his time with a resurging relevance for people today.

Digital Media

Theundocumented.com is a content-rich, bi-lingual (Spanish and English) website delivering movie clips and background information for Marco Williams’ The Undocumented. Serving as an online outreach hub, the site will directly incorporate downloadable educational resources and house two exciting and innovative features: The Map of the Undocumented and The Migrant Trail online game

Timeless in Oaxaca

Yolanda Cruz

Producer/Director: Yolanda Cruz
Category: New Media
Genre: Drama

Every Sunday morning, a Zapotec Grandpa comes to the city of Oaxaca to visit his granddaughter for a day. Their ritual consists of attending mass and window-shopping throughout the city, but on this particular Sunday, things take a different turn when they pass by a booth selling watches.

About Us

Latino Public Broadcasting is the leader of the development, production, acquisition and distribution of non-commercial educational and cultural media that is representative of Latino people, or addresses issues of particular interest to Latino Americans. These programs are produced for dissemination to the public broadcasting stations and other public telecommunication entities. LPB provides a voice to the diverse Latino community on public media throughout the United States.